The Sister (84 page)

"What do you mean?"

"Have you ever been to a medium?"

"No. I don't believe in them." She recalled how her parents had been cheated by fake offers to track Kathy down. "Your mother, The Sister, she isn't a medium is she? She's more than that."

"Yes, she is." Her eyes twinkled. "She won't be long now. Do you want to play with the sands while we're waiting?"

The Sister twisted herself away from his grasp. "Do not touch me," she said, and then fixed him with fierce intensity, her eyes piercing him, connecting…

A young girl lay on a bed in the grip of a fever. Hair, unwashed and bedraggled, the palest ginger he'd ever seen spread about the pillow around her head. He watched her, watching herself from a point, he guessed, that must be just below the level of the ceiling, her mother by her bedside, damping her forehead with a flannel, stroking and soothing. All colour left her skin. She disappeared from view as he was pulled backwards, high above the house, soaring into the stratosphere, spinning and wheeling. From dizzying height, he looked down. I know this place . . . A man and a woman pitching a tent . . . Through her eyes, he witnessed their murder, the strange ritual the killer followed in disposing of the bodies… Whisked back in moments, he found himself looking up at her mother as she smiled and caressed her face.
You're back…

The passing of time was marked in seconds rather than weeks as doctors and priests came and went.

The girl in the purple dress he now knew was Lei Liang… The killer lying in wait – he wanted to scream out, to warn her, as if his voice could carry back through the years.
Wait!

A small boy skipped along from stone to stone by a stream.
That's me!
He watched it all from his bird's eye view. His mother scared, looking all around, crying out his name, panicking, running in circles tethered to the spot by his little sister. His grandfather rising, turning and tapping his father . . .
Come on!
The race against time . . . Lei Liang's strangled face . . . his slip. Boyle as he looked for him… The body hurled into the water, and more things than he could possibly have seen for himself that day. Moments. Stolen moments. Stolen lives. The killer had done more than steal the lives he took; he'd stolen a part of the lives of those that had seen him too. Tumbling through time, echoes of long forgotten words trailed him.
You're back…

The truth dawned on him. "So all those times . . . all those near-death incidents and near misses, the interventions… You engineered them, didn't you?"

She shook her head. "No, not me. I'm not allowed to intervene, remember?"

"Then who…?"

Whispers, like those he heard in the night sometimes, rose from behind. A chorus of droning voices murmured, coming through, male and female, old and young.

"Look around you," she said, gesturing expansively at the congregation she'd assembled for him. "These are the shadows that intervened for you in life, as well as in death." Grandfather, Lei Liang, Brookes, Josie, Kirk and Kennedy … all were there.

Turning, he faced them and shook his head. "They're not real."

"You will see."

Each matched the last memory he had of them exactly.
Somehow, she's able to read my thoughts and project images back to me.

Gossamer strands of hair floated, charged with static electricity, surrounding her head in a rosy, beatific golden glow. Her eyes shimmered and fixed upon him. A maelstrom of complex feelings tore through his emotions, overwhelming him. Struggling to pick them apart, he saw Josie on a ship's deck alone at the rail. A man approached from behind and savagely attacked her. Spared the entire ordeal, for him it was over in seconds. The man heaved her overboard, into the sea.

Miller wept.

"You were among her last thoughts," Sister said.

"Don't…" He shielded his face behind a raised hand as he composed himself. "Can they see me? Can I talk to them? I feel them stronger than ever before."

"You closed yourself to them. Only in your dreams do you hear. Only through your mind can you speak to them."

"I have so many things I want to say . . ."

"They know. There's no time now, soon I have to leave."

"Sister, I need more answers. Just give me a few more minutes, please."
She smiled, and her eyes sparkled. "I bring water to within sight of the horse. Then he must find his own way to drink. Moments, you have moments."

He scanned their faces. Aside from one, all others averted their eyes.
Brookes. Perhaps he holds the key to the most recent mystery.
He hadn't changed since he'd last seen him alive. The shy smile, his hair the same bright copper hue, the creamy face and biscuit coloured freckles, all the same. He felt in his pocket; his fingers found his seashell. Pulling it out, he held it in front of him. "Chris, how did you give this back?"

The Sister answered for him. "The answer is beyond our comprehension."

"Does that mean I'll never understand? Answer me this. Did you send them to look out for me?"

"Heavens, no, they did that for themselves. As for understanding, I have shown you the water."

Aware that time was running out, he
felt
it from her. The water glimmered on the horizon as elusive as an oasis, and yet…

"Are they happy?" Miller said, indicating the small group.

"They're not unhappy."

"If you laid them to rest, would it mean I'd never see them again?"

The Sister smiled serenely. "In your heart, they will always be near you."

His former shadows bloomed into full Technicolour for the first time, faithful in every detail to the pictures that hung in the gallery of his mind. He scoured their impassive faces for a clue.
What do you want me to do?
No answer came. He searched for guidance in the depths of his soul. At last, he said, "Always in my heart? Then let them be at peace."

They faded from his view.

"Sister, I can't feel them anymore, have they really gone?" he said, looking troubled.

"Nothing is ever really gone, unless you believe it to be so."

A strange sensation tugged at his senses like the moon pulls on the tides; he was struck with the sudden realisation that Dr Ryan was Rosetta's father. It came through so strong; he knew she had wanted him to know. They exchanged glances.

"I lost my powers for a long time after that happened. I didn't think they'd come back, but they did." She fondled the stone wistfully and smiled. "You absorbed something of me; you had a part to play. No more, I'm setting you free, go," she said waving him away. "Now it's time I saw Stella."

Rosetta had risen from her seat before Miller arrived, already taking Stella by the hand as he walked into the room. He looked exhausted, but managed a half-hearted grin before he sat down in the warm seat vacated by Stella.

She took a deep breath as Rosetta led her down to the end of the long passageway.

The door was open. She entered the room.

"Come, Stella, sit with me." Sister moved from the gloom nearer to the window, where a small round table with two chairs was conveniently located. "It's my reading table," she explained. "Close enough to the light to see, not too close so as to burn me. I have this condition, see. It stops me living life to the full." She stretched across the table and took Stella's hand. Closing her gloved fingers around it, she squeezed reassurance. "What's your excuse?"

"I'm sorry?" she said, looking straight into The Sister's face. Seeing neither lines nor any blemish on her skin, she shifted her gaze to her eyes. What she saw frightened her. Eyes that were previously green, now shone with opalescence, shimmering, changing colour. Stella tried to look away, but a peculiar magnetism locked her in. Her hair stood on end, as The Sister's rose in harmony, haloing her head.

If the Sister had had reason to delve into Stella's past at Ryan's funeral, she would have seen the truth as it presented itself now. The truth of what had happened to her parents.
Stella doesn't know.
Allowing her perceptions to form fully, she reached into the past.

Her eyelids fluttered; static stormed across the surface of her skin. Energy sparked needles through her gloved hand into Stella's, and the shock jolted her into letting go.

Sister stood witness in her parent's bedroom on a night blacker than she'd ever seen.

Her father was having a nightmare, muttering in his sleep; a sheen of perspiration covered his face. Suddenly he called out, crystal clear. "Don't you touch my child!"

Her mother stirred and laid a hand on his chest, gently reassuring him. "What is it?" she said.

"Something's happened to Kathy!"

His eyes were wet and tinged with sadness. Wiping tears, he blinked hard. "We're never going to see her again, are we?"

"Don't say that, love, don't say that . . ." A strange light was in her eyes. "One day we will see her again. Together. Do you believe in God?"

He nodded; teeth clenched; eyes closed.

"Then, whatever happens . . . one day, we-will-see-her-again."

The following day, her mother had brought home a large dose of horse tranquillisers from the vets where they worked and waited until her husband had fallen asleep, before injecting him first and then herself. Sister, viewing ahead, held onto the vision. She remembered once asking Father O'Malley when she was a child.
"A white lie isn't a sin, is it Father?"

His eyes narrowed suspiciously. "A sin is a sin. What is the sin we're talking about here?"

"Keeping quiet about something to spare someone's feelings."

"Are you talking about shielding someone's feelings here, now? It's most likely a venial sin." His eyes softened. "I don't think anyone would get overexcited if you told a lie like that."

Sister decided she should spare Stella's feelings.

"Your mother wrote you a letter the night before the suicide; you never read it did you?"

Stella shook her head.

Giving her no choice, Sister recited from the image in her mind.

My dearest Stella,

I'm so very sorry, but by the time you read this, dad and I will have gone. There's nothing I can say that will change anything now. Your father had a nightmare, and I knew after that, we couldn't carry on. It would have been unfair to burden you with our loss anymore. Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind.

I hope you can forgive us.

Mum. xxx

Stella's eyes brimmed with tears. "How did hearing that help me?"

"You can't hide behind the not knowing now, can you? I used to ask people if they wanted the truth, but you know something. Sometimes you're better off without it. The truth has the power to hurt as well as heal. Open another tin of worms, what for?"

The former nun removed her gloves and revealed a polished black stone. "One more thing to do, Stella. I'm going to put this in your hand. Hold it out for me."

Rosetta raked the sands, levelling them over the tray with the edge of her hand. "You sure you don't want to do this with me, Miller?"

"Positive."

"You might see something, I already can. Three women in your life, Miller, and only one is any good for you."

"Is that right?" he grinned. "Is one of them a stranger, tall and dark?"

"See for yourself." Her eyes flashed green and brilliant. "Make sure you choose wisely."

He laughed, "I can't see anything. Your mother switches me on and off like a video link."

"She does? How does she do that then— wait, what's that?" She defocused and stared across the surface. "You see that cross? They're coming."

The weight of the stone surprised her. Stella had the sensation of something drawn out from her, as if she were donating blood; the feeling lasted for the briefest moment and then was gone.

Sister retrieved the stone and held on to it, smiling an enigmatic smile. "You always said you needed more than anecdotal evidence that you needed an experience of your own and nothing short of a miracle would change your mind."

Stella stared at her transfixed.

"You also said, if there were a God, if there was such a being, then he was the God of grief and sadness, disappointment and loneliness. You just ploughed your furrow through life, dealing with whatever it threw up, looking forward to the next hundred yards,"

Stella couldn't take her eyes off her.

"Yours was not life, it was a mere existence. A condition bestowed on you by something that happened before you were born."

"How do you know all that? I wrote that in my diary when I was seventeen-years-old, and then I ripped the page out and threw it away. How could you know?"